It looks as if protesters in Ukraine can topple the government, and it's not clear whether the president has the stomach or the intellect to control the situation there, Mark Almond, an Oxford University historian, told RT.

Almond believes that these protests are part of Ukraine's
economic difficulties. But association with Europe "would
stimulate an economic downturn and more mass migration, rather
than reform process, which would improve life," he believes.

RT:It does look like protesters would like to topple
the government. Do you think it is likely to happen?

Mark Almond: It is possible. There is a template that they
are following, which happened in Belgrade in Serbia in 2000 and
in Georgia in 2003: storm public buildings, hope to face a
demoralized government. And it has to be said that the president
of Ukraine zigzagged so much not just over Europe, but over the
question of policing and it is not quite clear whether he has the
stomach or the intellect to control the situation there.

RT:It’s not the first time we are seeing a revolution
there. What difference would a second one make?

MA: This seems to be a great tragedy of Ukraine. It would
seem that Ukrainians can’t learn from their own experience. After
all, we had in 2004-05 the so-called Orange Revolution, and it
actually gave way to in-fighting, to terrible corruption, to
economic disaster – that’s what actually enabled Yanukovich to
win the election and come back to power. We have to be careful
with attributing what is going to the majority of people in
Ukraine. I suspect the tragedy of the Ukrainians is that the
great majority of people are rather passive and certainly rather
disillusioned about politics on both sides of the equation.

The risk now is that we have politics of two minorities. It may
be that group on the streets, the group with paramilitary
nationalist support from the West (including several European
countries) may feel they’ve got the strength to stage a kind of
coup and this could change the government, it could lead to a
very violent situation and it could even question whether Ukraine
is viable as a state.

'Big country at bad starting point'

RT:And what about Europe’s motives? It is based out of
purely economic reasons, or is it a challenge to Russia?

MA: For Ukraine this is part of its economic difficulties.
There is very little to attract it to Europe. In fact, what do
they produce what European don’t already have. We have a huge
agricultural sector, we have a heavy industrial sector and so on.
It is really a geo-strategic issue I think to push Russia further
and further back into Asia. And this is why Ukraine is important.

Whether it is a good thing for Europe that Ukraine might yet
become and economically associated with Europe is another
question. If we think about countries like Romania, Poland,
Bulgaria and Lithuania, we see massive migrations of their
ordinary people into Western Europe, pushing down wages, making
social problems that exist in Britain, Germany and France and
Spain and Italy.

Ukraine is a big country in an even worse starting point. From an
economic point of view, more association with Europe will
actually be a stimulus to more economic downturn and more mass
migration, rather than a starting point for some reform process,
which will improve life, despite the rhetoric about it.

RT:Yanukovich said that he may review this early next
year. Do you think perhaps there could be a deal in the
future?

MA: In addition to protesters on the street, there are
also some economic interests in Ukraine who think they could
benefit from this. I think if we look at the society as a whole
and the economy as a whole, it’s an open question. So Yanukovich
may be trying to calm the situation by saying this. He may also
think that it is to his advantage. After all, he faces the
problem that the most politically organized group, the decisive
group, may be the pro-European lobby who offer very generous
amounts of financial assistance. So he may be hoping to calm
them.

In a sense if he doesn’t listen to what they say, he should.
Because essentially they are saying that he is already toast -
that they protest about Mrs. Tymoshenko being in prison, but they
intend to put him and his supporters in prison. This is part of a
problem of the heightened tensions in Ukraine. Once you begin to
have one group saying that the other side of the equation is
traitors, enemies of people, the danger is that those people have
nowhere to go. You begin to create the atmosphere of a civil war,
rather than of a civil debate.

RT:Brussels was very surprised when Ukraine made a
U-turn over this. Are they afraid of losing face over this?

MA: Brussels and West in general would prefer to be
winners out of this and they hope that Mr. Yanukovich will shoot
himself in the other foot, having not handled this crisis very
well so far, but he will try to curry favor back in Brussels, but
I don’t think this would rescue him. Maybe sadly there is nothing
that can rescue the Ukrainian situation easily or simply.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.